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America's greatest automobile museums

February 22, 2012

The museum at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway is on our list of the five best.

Editor's note:Contributor Ken Gross knows museums. He is the former executive director of the Petersen Automobile Museum and was guest curator for "Allure of the Automobile" at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta. He's developing the opening exhibit for LeMay--America's Car Museum in Tacoma, Wash., and he's creating an exhibit called "Speed: The Art of the Performance Car" at the Utah Museum of Art in Salt Lake City. Both exhibits open in June. We asked Gross to choose the country's five best automobile museums open to the public (not private collections). Here are his picks.

The late J. B. Nethercutt amassed a fabulous classic-car collection. The museum is family-operated, and its comprehensive restoration shop (which has had many Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance Best of Show winners) is second to none.